Albums of the Year # 114 Gina Birch - I Play My Bass Loud

 

'They are so bad that every time the waiter drops a tray we get up and dance.'

Danny Kelly - Live review of The Raincoats, NME 1979

More than thirty years after its release, The Raincoats eponymous debut album remains a landmark album. On the surface inept. Its influence and impact has been profound and enduring. Just ask Kurt Cobain. Of course you can't, but he understood immediately that what they did was deeply aligned with what he and Nirvana wanted to do.

All of The Raincoats records are worthy of close acquaintance. It's truly inspirational stuff. Gina Birch, the band's bassist and co-writer and co-vocalist is back as she closes in on seventy with her debut album I Play My Bass Loud.

It's as discordant, snotty and unrepentant as you could possibly wish. Birch says famously of the Slits  gig she witnessed that led her to follow a career in music rather than the one in art she might have pursued: ' It was as if suddenly I was given permission.'

I Play My Bass Loud is inspirational as everything Birch has been involved in has been Guided by intuition as all great art is. It encourages the listener to break rules and come up with new ones that make sense to them. It's Punk essentially as you'd expect it to be. Very good Punk at that.